


Five Stages Of Grief

by NishkaGray



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Acceptance, Alcoholic Tony Stark, Anger, Angst, Bargaining, Character Study, Denial, Depression, Five Stages of Grief, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Minor Character Death, Past Character Death, Post-Civil War (Marvel), Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-08
Updated: 2016-06-27
Packaged: 2018-05-19 03:09:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5951593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NishkaGray/pseuds/NishkaGray
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Kübler-Ross model postulates a series of emotional stages experienced by survivors of an intimate's death, wherein the five stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. </p><p>The model was first introduced by Swiss psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book, On Death and Dying, and was inspired by her work with terminally ill patients. Motivated by the lack of curriculum in medical schools on the subject of death and dying, Kübler-Ross examined death and those faced with it at the University of Chicago medical school. Kübler-Ross' project evolved into a series of seminars which, along with patient interviews and previous research, became the foundation for her book.</p><p>Kübler-Ross noted later in life that the stages are not a linear and predictable progression and that she regretted writing them in a way that was misunderstood. Rather, these are a collation of five common experiences for the bereaved that can occur in any order, if at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Denial

**Author's Note:**

> If you have not read the comics and don't know how Captain America: Civil War is supposed to end, this is your only spoiler warning.
> 
> The five chapters are five separate stories with one connecting thread. Loosely based on "Fallen Son: The Death of Captain America" comics.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Denial - In this stage the individual employs a defense mechanism that buffers the immediate shock by denying the reality of the situation and hiding from the facts.**

The bar is dingy, there’s no other words to describe it. The table is sticky and the beer tastes like shit. There’s a sign on the door that says no smoking, but clouds of sweet smelling vapor swirl around them anyway. It’s not even real cigarettes, whatever it is. Some hippy flavored shit. Sam’s drank three bottles of swill, but it’s the smoke that lingers in the back of his throat.

 

He feels tired. It’s not the good tired, the end of the battle, coming out on top tired. It’s the type of tired that comes from not being able to rest, not being able to close his eyes, even for a second, because each time he does he sees it all happening again, in slow motion. It’s the type of tired he’s seen in men back for their third and fourth tour, the thousand-yard stare, the purple bruises under their eyes, the unsteady hands. Can’t sleep because nightmares will get you, can’t eat because everything tastes like ash. Can’t even think straight because then, it would make it all real, it would mean it actually happened and there is no going back, there is no changing it.

 

He can’t do that yet. He’s the type of tired that makes men curl up with a rifle under their chin and pull the trigger, just to get some goddamned relief. But he can’t let go.

 

“I don’t understand what you’re saying,” Barton says, but he does.

He understands exactly what Sam is saying.

 

“I’ve seen him take five bullets, one in his gut, and walk away. Same slugs that should’ve killed Fury but didn’t. It doesn’t feel right, that’s all I’m saying. Two bullets to take down Captain America? It’s not right.”

 

Barton rubs his hand across his face. He’s tired too, maybe not the same type of tired, but getting close. He has someone, Sam remembers. He has a home, wife, kids. He has a place to go where he can unplug the rest of the world and forget for a while. He has someone to wrap his arms around.

 

They teach you that, when you come back home. The value of partnership, the importance of social support, of having loved ones you can lean on. Someone you can share your experiences with. No one should carry that kind of burden alone.

 

Steve had people to lean on. Even the mighty Captain America had needed people to depend on. He had Sam, Wanda, Bucky. Tony and Natasha before it all went to shit. Sam only had Steve. It was enough. Steve could be more than enough, for anyone. But this means that now, Sam has nothing. Sam has no one.

 

“Who would hush something like that up? What would be the point?” Barton says.

“I don’t know. Maybe they’re trying to find out how someone got close enough to Sharon Carter to brainwash her. Trying to draw out anyone else in S.H.I.E.L.D. who might be in on it. There could be a million reasons. It’s not the first time a political figure played dead for the sake of some larger plan. Nick Fury did the same damn thing not that long ago.”

“Steve’s not Nick. He wouldn’t do that.”

“You don’t know what Steve would do. What if it wasn’t his choice? Tony made himself the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. pretty fucking quickly, if you ask me. Maybe they’re holding him, letting everyone think he’s dead.”

 

“Sam,” Barton says, and now he sounds like Sam feels, broken and tired and almost angry, “Steve is dead.”

 

“No. Not until I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”

“Listen--“

“No. I asked you because I figured you’d wanna be sure. But I don’t need you. I can go alone.”

 

It’s not exactly true. He’s afraid of what he might do if he goes alone.

 

They had him registered after it all went down. He hadn’t complained. It was what Steve would’ve wanted, no more fighting, no more people getting hurt. Sam sucked it up and did it. At least he hadn’t had to deal with Stark. Maria Hill took care of it, and she did it without asking all those question Sam couldn’t handle. If anyone had asked him how he was doing, how he was dealing in those first two days, he might have just lost his damn mind.

 

He still might. He might be losing his mind right now. But he has to know, for sure. He’ll never be able to rest otherwise. He might never be able to rest again either way, but at least he would make that first step. Acceptance might be impossible, but he knows enough to try.

 

“You can’t go in there alone.”

 

He can, but he shouldn’t. He knows he shouldn’t. So he sits silently and waits. It’s a dirty tactic and not so long ago, he would’ve felt bad for it. He’s not quite sure what he’s feeling now.

 

Barton sighs and finishes off his swill.

 

“All right. But afterwards, you gotta let it go man. You know that, right?”

“Sure,” Sam says.

 

He knows it. He’s just sure it won’t make a difference.

 

\--

 

They wait, for nearly an hour.

 

They’re surrounded by S.H.I.E.L.D. agents the entire time, and Sam wants to laugh at them. They’re afraid. They’re afraid of him and they’re afraid of Barton, and with the two of them together they look like they’re shitting their pants. For nearly an hour.

 

Barnes had gone underground, not a whisper of him to be heard. The man had been a ghost once already, so he knew the drill. Sam wishes he’d done the same. He wants to do it right now, just disappear somewhere where no one would find him again. That way, if he does eat a bullet, no one would ever know.

 

Maria Hill finally shows up, looking like someone dragged her out of bed. It’s subtle; a hair out of place, a wrinkled sleeve, a faint smudge of mascara in the corner of one eye. She looks tired too and Sam hates her a little bit. Despite everything, she still reeks of purpose, of belonging. He can see it in the set of her shoulders, the confidence, the determination. He wants to ask her what it feels like to have been tied to the winning side. He genuinely wants to know. Does it feel good? Does it feel satisfying to have all her little ducks in the row, to have won the war, to be Stark’s faithful lapdog again?

 

Barton nudges him and he unclenches his fists. It’s hard. It hurts. He’ll have imprints of his nails embedded in his skin.

 

“I’m not supposed to do this,” she says, as if she’s doing them some kind of a favor.

 

Sam swallows a million things he wants to say. He grinds his teeth and stays silent. At least she doesn’t look like she’s waiting for gratitude.

 

She leads them to the elevator and Barton steps in first, forming a barrier between them. The trip down is long and silent. Barton looks cool as a cucumber now; butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. Maria’s spine is iron straight. Her fingers twitch.

 

The elevator opens in some sub level, Sam doesn’t know which, and he doesn’t care. There are basements upon basements in the S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters, and probably right back on schedule as if nothing had happened. Registering potential threats, identifying targets, tracking people who not that long ago, saved their damn agency from sinking. Who would’ve stopped Hydra from taking over their precious agency if Steve hadn’t been around? Who will do it the next time some department gets a little too curious about an alien artifact, and decides to see what makes it tick? Who is left to regulate the regulators?

 

The hallway is cold. Some moron painted it green, a cross between moss and baby puke. Sam hates it.

 

Maria’s heels echo in the silence. She leads them to a set of double doors and pauses, as if to give them a chance to change their mind. Sam stays silent. He’s waited over an hour now, what’s a few more moments?

 

She sighs,

“Only a few minutes.”

 

It’s even colder in the room. So cold that Sam chokes on it. No one follows him in, but he only knows this in some peripheral, unimportant way.

 

The room is large and empty. He’s not sure what he expected. Maybe somewhere warmer, as illogical as it sounds. Steve still in his suit, covered in blood, like he was the last time Sam saw him. Maybe a bed. A pillow. Not the metal table in the middle of the room. Not the blue skin and the pale sheet.

 

Someone had gotten the blood out of his hair. The bullet hole looks clean, almost clinical. Incredibly small. Tiny. There is another one somewhere, Sam knows, but the other one is unimportant. It was this one, right at the temple, that did the job. One bullet to take out a man who’d survived half a century frozen in ice. One bullet to extinguish a national legend. One single person, with a regular gun, with an ordinary bullet, killed Captain America.

 

His skin is ice under Sam’s fingers. It doesn’t feel like Steve any more. It feels like marble, hard and unyielding. His hands are shaking, but he brushes his fingers through Steve’s hair anyway. Somewhere behind him someone makes a sound.

 

It’s Maria. She sounds like she’s crying.

 

Good. She should be crying. The entire goddamned world should be crying. They should be weeping in the streets. There would never be another Steve Rogers, not as long as any of them lived. And they don’t even know what they lost. How could they?

 

Who could understand Steve’s stubbornness, his unwavering purpose, his sense of justice? Steve’s devotion to his friends, his faith in humanity? The little lists, the old record player, his lame sense of humor, the endless patience for kids who wanted to show off their action figures, the orange juice in the mornings so loaded in pulp that Sam wanted to puke, his weakness for anything chocolate or covered in powdered sugar, driving across the damn town to get donuts from a "real donut place Sam, they make it right in front of you, you’ll love it," the need to stop and pet every damn stray dog in the city of New York, sitting silently in the back of Sam’s meetings, shaking hands with veterans and thanking them for their service, always giving, giving, giving.

 

Steve, sitting on the window sill, with his stupid sketch pad. Catching New York at dusk, giving it soul without color, little wrinkle in between his eyebrows, bottom lip sucked into his mouth. Steve.

 

When he finally sobs it feels like his soul is tearing.

 


	2. Anger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Anger - The intense emotion is deflected from the individual’s vulnerable core, redirected and expressed instead as anger. The anger may be aimed at inanimate objects, complete strangers, friends or family.**

The Winter Soldier waits.

 

The city is as silent as it will ever get. There is a lull between three and four in the morning, when everything seems to slow down. It had rained earlier on; the streets are slick like glass. The brick blood red under the street lights.

 

The building across the way is illuminated well. There is a black SUV parked out front, the windows tinted well past the state regulations. It’s ostentatious. Obvious. Target set up as bait.

 

Down the street there is an old Honda, green and rusty. Not so obvious. In the building above him, two apartments with their lights still on. Acknowledged and dismissed. Third from the left on the second floor. Dark windows, blinds instead of curtains. S.H.I.E.L.D. has their shit together. For once. Not that it matters.

 

The Winter Soldier waits. Silent. Unmoving. A shadow among shadows.

 

Bucky Barnes remembers.

 

Steve sick with pneumonia. The horrible wet cough that rattled in his lungs. His hair slick with sweat. The stubborn insistence that Bucky stays at least five feet away at all times. ‘I don’t wanna get you sick Buck. I’m fine, you don’t need to hover.’ His ribs sharp enough to cut. Hollow cheeks and deep set eyes. The unhealthy flush of fever high on his cheeks. Looking like he was dying.

 

Steve working at the little market down the street. The stupid blue apron he could tie twice around his waist and still have plenty left over. Peddling wrinkled fruit and questionable bags of flour. Smiling sweetly at the matrons who try and pinch his cheeks. Grumbling to Bucky afterwards, ‘He doesn’t care what he’s selling to these people. I’m telling you, it ain’t right, weevils in the flour, in the wheat. I can’t just sell it to them.’

 

Steve, bloody and stubborn, not knowing how to stay down. Getting his nose broken twice. His cheekbone fractured once. Scraping his knuckles and elbows and knees. Breaking two of his fingers. 

 

‘Only you Steve. How’d you break a finger without landing one punch?’

‘Shut up.’

 

Steve, huddled in his favorite corner next to the window facing South, where the light was always good. The soft sound of charcoal on paper. The sunlight in his hair. A smear of charcoal dust accross one hollow cheek.

 

Steve turning to him, fierce and firm, ‘Bucky, come on! There are men laying down their lives. I got no right to do any less than them. That’s what you don’t understand. This isn’t about me.’

 

Steve telling him not to win the war till he gets there.

 

The Winter Soldier moves.

 

\--

 

The last one is almost too easy. He hides the body in the shadows. He has ten minutes, give or take. It’s plenty of time.

 

The apartment is locked. He could break in, but he picks the main lock instead. It takes forty-five seconds. The other two locks take twenty seconds each. Less than two minutes and he’s inside.

 

The Winter Soldier pauses there, the door behind him. He can hear soft breathing. A clock ticking. Somewhere in an apartment below, someone is using the toilet. The windows are facing the building across the street. The street light illuminates the kitchen. Two quarters of the living room. The wind is howling in the stairwell. The floors are hardwood and old. They will creak. He moves closer to the wall.

 

The Winter Soldier calculates.

 

Bucky wants to scream.

 

Steve had liked her. Steve had asked her out for coffee. She'd used some sort of apple stuff to wash her hair, and he can smell it in the air, faint but still there. She’d had a glass of wine instead of supper. She slept with her socks on, just in case she needed to run. There is a picture in her wallet of a little boy. Some cousin’s kid, now three years old. She likes the picture. She loves the kid. She thinks the kid is smarter than her cousin already, and she’s probably right. She’d gone to visit Peggy that same morning. She’d left crying. 

 

He covers her mouth with the metal hand, fingers digging into her cheek. She’s awake instantly, eyes widening. He presses the gun in between her eyes.

 

“He would’ve never blamed you, you know. Would’ve forgiven you in an instant, my Stevie. He had a good heart like that.”

 

She watches him, unmoving.

 

“Should’ve killed me instead,” he says, his voice cracking.

 

She closes her eyes.

 

The gunshot is muffled, but still too loud. Blood sprays over the cushions.

 

He removes his hand and leaves an imprint of his fingers on her cheek. Somewhere, far away, a dog barks. Then another.

 

The Winter Soldier tucks the gun away and sneaks back out into the hall.

 

 


	3. Bargaining

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Bargaining - The normal reaction to feelings of helplessness and vulnerability is often a need to regain control.**

He meets her on a roof. The sky is overcast and heavy. There might have been sunny days since it happened, but Clint has a hard time remembering any. He doesn’t mind the gloom. It’s appropriate to the situation.

He doesn’t hear her coming. One moment he’s alone, the noise of the city far below him. In the next, she is standing next to him, red hair blowing in the wind.

Even a day ago he would have had something to say. Today he knows there is no point. They’ve always understood each other on some level he would be hard pressed to explain to anyone else. She already knows why Clint had chosen to stand by Steve. Clint understands why she had chosen to follow Tony. It might have been the first time they had taken positions so openly hostile towards each other, but Clint needs no explanations.

Not that she would offer any.

For a moment he wonders if this is the entire point of their meeting now, after the tempers have cooled and the situation more or less under control; if this is their way of honoring what was lost.

“Tony has the shield,” she says, and Clint remembers that no, that has never been her way.

She does not weep for the dead, at least not where others can see.

“He wants you to take it.”

It feels like a punch to the gut, and so he takes it like one.

He hunches slightly and takes a deep breath. She watches him out of the corner of her eye, observing, calculating. He’s found himself on the receiving end of that gaze more times than he can count. This time it feels different, it feels more invasive. It takes him a while to figure out why.

No, he doesn’t need an explanation. But that doesn’t mean he’s not angry.

“Why?”

“You have what it takes, to carry it.”

It’s incredible, to feel insulted and honored at the same time, all while still being angry.

The idea that anyone else in the world has what it takes to carry Steve’s shield feels like a sacrilege, but being singled out as that one person capable of it is not something anyone would take lightly. To pick up where Steve left off. To be the symbol against injustice, a voice of reason, to show that Steve’s death isn’t an end to everything Steve had fought for while he lived. Whoever picks up the shield can’t be allowed to do it with pride or zeal or with false intentions. Whoever picks up the shield should not be someone who would dishonor Steve’s memory.

And yet it’s so bitter, that she would come to him with flattery. That this is the angle she chose to play.

The world needs Captain America. Clint could’ve been compelled with that argument. The shield is a symbol, just as Captain America was a symbol. Symbols don’t die; they continue to stand for something long after the person carrying them is gone. He can accept that, the need to have Captain America live on through someone else. But Clint can think of other people more qualified for that role. Natasha can too.

She didn’t come to him because he has what it takes to carry it. She came to him because he might be the only one left who would listen to anything her and Tony have to say. As a peace offering, it’s low, even for her. As a rational decision, it’s an insult to her intelligence and his own; they both know he doesn’t really have what it takes. As a last resort, it’s just plain fucking sad. That they’ve fractured so badly, so effectively, that Clint is their only choice.

“No,” he says, “I don’t want it.”

She shifts slightly. If he looks at her he would know what it means. He would know if she’s disappointed, resigned, if she’d expected it. He doesn’t. He’s not sure if he cares enough.

“It doesn’t have to end this way,” she says simply, a statement of fact.

Suddenly, he’s tired of this dance. Just because she doesn’t know how to dance to any other tune, it doesn’t mean that he wants to dance along. It never comes naturally to him. It takes time and effort, trying to stay two steps ahead of her, trying to outmaneuver her, picking apart her body language and words and motions. It used to be fun, a game they could both play, she always in the lead and he, predictably, a few steps behind. Except that it’s not a game to her, it’s simply who she is. And Clint understands. He respects it even. But he’s just too fucking tired for it today.

He’s promised to see Sam one more time before he leaves, and even Sam’s depressing conspiracy theories seem easier to handle right now.

He turns to leave.

“What will you do now?” she asks, and she sounds genuinely curious.

Who is he now, if he’s no longer S.H.I.E.L.D., if he’s no longer an Avenger? Where do his loyalties lie?

That’s what she’s asking. Where does he belong? Does he feel unanchored, drifting aimlessly like Sam? Vengeful and angry like Barnes? What is his purpose?

It’s a silly question to ask. After all, when the lines were drawn, this is precisely why they’d found themselves on the opposite sides.

“I’m going home.”


	4. Depression

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Depression - During the fourth stage, the individual despairs at the recognition of mortality. In this state, the individual may become silent, refuse visitors and spend much of the time mournful and sullen.**

She finds him in his rarely used home theater, some black and white movie projected on the big screen. The lights are dim and the air stale, but she can almost sense the warmth the space had been meant to hold. Like the exercise room, the dining hall, the 24-hour coffee bar. The Olympic size pool, and the shooting range. Each planned, designed and built for a purpose that no longer exists. A luxurious home for a new family to replace the one he’d lost. Now empty, the family gone before it even fully formed.

 

Love is for children, because they still believe that love moves the world. That it can stop wars and move mountains, that love, powerful enough, can conquer anything. She believed in love as a child. She’d believed it even in her most painful moments, when her mind was scraped raw and her body broken, to be molded into the thing it is today. She believed it because she didn’t know how to survive without loving, without hating, without feeling. Today she believes only in those things which are certain; life, death, and the instability of the ground under her feet, the ever shifting landscape she must navigate in order to live through today and into tomorrow. All else is transient and fleeting. Debts to be repaid, moral questions to be answered, choices to be made. Standing between life and death, decisions are made, and unmade, and in the end become unimportant. The outcome is only certain in the now, and even now is only certain one moment at a time.

 

She is not a child any more, but he is. Afraid of being hated, uneasy about being feared, but above all, always aching to be loved. Feeling his way through each hour and each day, reason constantly shifting under the pressure of emotion. Unbalanced, unsteady, a destructive force leaving ruin in its wake.

 

She moves around the room silently, not wanting to be heard. He’s awake, blank stare focused on the screen, light and darkness playing across his face. There’s a faint smell of sweat and salt in the air as she moves closer, both nearly overpowered by the sharp stench of alcohol. The empty bottles sit lined up next to his feet like an army awaiting orders. His face is blotchy and sallow. If he’d cried at one time, the tears seem long gone now.

 

She knows this movie in some foggy disconnected way. The woman, the main character, is a phone operator. Her attempts to gather information by listening to the phone calls of a man she’s attracted to lead her to discover a murder plot in progress. It is a comedy; at least, she believes it was intended as a comedy. There are very few things she finds genuinely amusing, but she doesn’t remember this film being one of them.

 

Steve though, Steve would have watched it. This film, and doubtlessly countless other black and white treasures Tony had carefully selected and spent an ungodly fortune on. All done for the purpose of giving Steve a small part of his childhood back, having it projected on a large screen in a tower that Tony had intended as his home, as Steve’s home, as hers, and Clint’s, and Bruce’s home.

 

It was all for them. The 24-hour coffee bar for Clint, the meditation room for Bruce, the shooting range, the swimming pool, the dining hall. A new set of wings for Sam, a man Tony had not even met until they faced each other on the opposite sides of a war. A new motorcycle for Steve, a 1942 Harley-Davidson XA, its design based on the German BMW R71, enhanced with Stark tech and still wrapped in plastic in the garage below. A new Captain America suit. Red, white, blue, and bulletproof. Because the Winter Soldier had put five bullets in Steve, and because in Tony’s world what can’t be fixed must be outfitted, and fortified, and encased in something unbreakable.

 

Because this is what love does. It makes a person think they can protect those they love, prevent them from dying, from being hurt. Only a child believes that death can be stopped. And only a child is broken by death, as he is broken now, maybe even for good this time.

 

 

She’d come to tell him that Clint had refused the Shield, as she’d known he would. Instead, she steps back lightly into the cover of darkness. There is nothing left here for her, or anyone else. Just an empty tower, gleaming and shiny, a silent world built on the shifting ground, for love that didn’t last.

She feels an echo of pity, but only an echo, and only for a moment. The world is shifting again, and she must stay on her feet to see tomorrow.


	5. Acceptance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Acceptance – In the last stage the individual experiencing grief no longer is looking backward, and is beginning to understand that there is a new beginning on the horizon.**

They’re burying Captain America on a Thursday.

 

Exactly two hundred and seventeen people are attending. Only sixteen are a threat. Two of those sixteen are private protection detail. Five work for government agencies. One of them is the Widow. Three are Hydra, and he commits their faces to his memory. They are an issue to be solved at a later date. The mission target arrives late, possibly drugged, probably intoxicated. The Widow links their arms together so she can hold him up. She also slips a small tracker on the clasp of the target’s gold watch. A few dozen people are already weeping, but it’s the polite sort of muffled grief perfectly acceptable at funerals. A Catholic priest is there for The Rite of Committal.

 

The funeral itself lasts about an hour. He mumbles the Lord’s Prayer with the others, because it seems a sacrilege not to. Afterwards, people begin drifting off. It takes another hour for them to clear out. The target remains. The Widow remains. The private protection detail also remains, but moves a respectable distance away. The target looks like shit. The Winter Soldier sympathizes.

 

The Widow has changed roles since the last time he saw her. Now she is a friend, offering comfort. There might be genuine grief there, but it’s not the grief she’s wearing on her face. Nothing about her is ever genuine. Not the words she speaks, skin she wears, not the expression on her face or the honesty in her eyes. It’s all a mask covering another mask, covering another mask. Underneath it all there is nothing. He knows; they’ve both been scraped empty and rebuilt from the ground up. He almost envies her. Her programming is immaculate. His, on the other hand, had been a clumsy thing. Things were left behind, to stew, to fester, to grow out of the mold.

 

Another fifteen minutes and she finally leaves. The Winter Soldier drops down to the ground without making a sound. He brushes off his suit, reties his hair, covers the metal hand with a glove. Just another mourner crossing the graveyard. Nothing to see here. The protection detail sees and dismisses him. They should both be fired.

 

He pauses at the grave site, waits until the target notices him. It takes a little while but he doesn’t mind.

 

The target doesn’t look surprised. He doesn’t look relieved. He doesn’t look like anything really. Just a hollow man in an expensive suit.

 

“Oh good,” he says, “are you here to kill me too?”

 

Memory download. Car crash. Two targets, a man and a woman.

 

Howard Stark.

Seventy-four year old white male, five foot eight, approximately one hundred and ninety three pounds.

Cause of death: subdural hematoma following a traumatic brain injury.

Maria Stark.

Seventy year old white female, five foot five, approximately one hundred and thirty seven pounds.

Cause of death: asphyxiation.

 

Time of death: December sixteenth, nineteen-ninety-one, approximately twenty two hundred hours.

 

Right. He’d forgotten all about that.

 

“No,” he says.

“Then what do you want?”

“The shield.”

 

The target makes a sound. It’s an unpleasant sound. Oh, for fuck’s sake. Is he crying?

 

No. He’s laughing.

 

“ _You_ wanna be the next Captain America? Oh, this is just--“ the target sounds like a dying wildcat.

The Winter Soldier is not amused.

 

The sound dies down as abruptly as it started. In the silence that follows, the Winter Soldier crouches down, but it is Bucky Barnes who touches the earth, still damp from being disturbed.

 

“Steve picked up the shield for me. He gave it back for me.”

“Why is everything always about you?”

“Pot,” Bucky Barnes says, “Kettle.”

“Touché.”

 

The target looks off into the distance. He seems a little less hollow now. What would that feel like? To be less hollow? To be made more with only a few words?

 

“You can have the Shield. And the suit. And the motorcycle. But Hydra goes first.”

 

The Winter Soldier nods. Those are acceptable terms.

 

The target stretches out his hand over the damp earth. The Winter Soldier doesn’t care for the gesture. But Bucky Barnes takes his hand and shakes it.

He thinks Steve would approve.


End file.
